Android Tablet in Car

The first thing that comes to mind is tethering. Are you set up with your phone service to allow tethering from your phone to another device to share the internet? If not, I'd start there. It's not automatic and most cell carriers charge extra.

I do all of that with my Nexus 5 phone through bluetooth.. how new is your car stereo?

It's a regular old dumb stereo. The nexus 5 is what I would like to have, but Verizon won't carry it.

Mostly want to use the Nexus 7 sorta like a head unit, but just plugged into the aux.

You know, I had forgotten that "tethering" was even a separate paid-for feature. You are correct that was exactly the problem. Seems silly to me but they would want to charge me to use my bluetooth connection when I have hotspot enabled through the carrier.

Try one of these products from Sony.

Sony video

If you have BlueTooth on your car stereo you can use any android phone with BlueTooth as a video player or music player to play music, with or without the phone connected to any phone provider.

With a provider it is like any phone and will stream music to the car stereo and use as a handsfree phone over the car speakers or BlueTooth headphones.

Put both devices in search mode and they will automatically pair.

I had a Droid X and then RAZR with 64gb mini SD card and did that.

Now with the Galaxy S5 and a 128gb mini SD (EBAY Sandisk from china $29 and free shipping) it has most of my music onboard.

There are a multitude of FM BLUETOOTH ADAPTER that will work on any FM car stero.

While you are at it, install a forward and rear camera. The rear for a backup camera and the front for a dashcam. have it continuously recording and overwriting old data until you catch something that you want to save.

James

Verizon just recently added plans that no longer charge for tethering. It was my biggest gripe with Verizon. Glad they made the change. It promotes more data use so it seems like good business sense.

Upgrade to the S5. Free tethering. Plus the Google Now commands let you do almost anything by voice....especially if you install the Commander app. From there, you can do things like...

"Ok Google", "Next Track" or "OK Google" "Text Mike I am running late", etc